One of the Few
by Eriala
Summary: An irrelevant portrait of the first War, featuring Alice, Lily, and Andromeda, among others. Mentions of slash. Ch. 2: in which Umbridge speaks with the family werewolf, and Bella is proud to plead guilty. Hiatus.
1. Lily, Alice, Andromeda

**Disclaimer: I don't own it.  
A/N: this is not chronological... or any kind of logical, actually. you have been warned. also know that this fic is not in any way compatible with my 'dopplebeater defense' - the pairings here are a bit mismatched from the ones there, so that would just be a bit weird. anyways, enjoy, and tell me what you think!  
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**One of the Few **

**1.**

Lily is not particularly good at surviving. It is just something that happens to her, something that she cannot seem to stop doing. Perhaps she has become addicted to life, either the best or worst craving in a world woven together by tragedy and warfare.

Without Alice's resolve, raging behind a pleasant face – "Keep your fucking prophesy away from my son," the other woman had said, or something headstrong of that sort – Lily lowers her hands, shaping them into claws of discontentment, gesturing mindlessly and wincing. "I'm sorry," she whispers, backing up a few steps, trembling with self-control, nodding her head in a sort of half-bow. I'm sorry, Old Man, but don't need your politics, and children do not belong in a war.

**2.**

War is a thousand tragedies strung together like the pasta necklaces that Andromeda makes at five years old, sticky blue and green paint that stains her hands and won't come off. Her mother slaps her over the back of the head, mumbles something about 'unacceptable,' and Sirius teaches her to hide her weaknesses. When she reaches sixteen, the war has not yet taken on its great title of War, not to her, not until the first tragedy that beats her over the head and leaves her for fate to find.

Her seventeenth birthday, it is raining, and she usually loves rain. Now she is lying on her bed. Green curtains, pulled shut. Don't let the sunlight in. Don't let anything in. Be alone, don't be Andromeda Black, don't be anyone.

She wants to sleep but can't, just can't. Andromeda glares at her for wrist what must be at least five minutes before she remembers having lost her watch; it is early, the dawn sky tells her, and her roommates are snoring slightly. The persistent, constant ticking sound that at first she had at first mistaken for a clock is actually an owl, pecking relentlessly against the window by her bed. Stretching, she stands, leans against the glass, gave the bird a glare to rival its own stubborn look, and then sighs when this achieves nothing. Rain is still falling, rolling in shimmering beads off its tawny feathers as she watches. "Shoo," she whispers, very softly, then feels very much like a Muggle. It is, unsurprisingly, not such a bad feeling.

But there is no drenched letter dumped on the head of an unsuspecting sleeping roommate when she lets the owl in – rather, it swoops directly into her face, dropping a tiny pink flower into her shocked hands, then leaves again, battling against the downpour. She twirls the blossom delicately between her fingers, and she'll make sure to thank Ted next time she sees him.

Then drops it to the floor. Falls back onto her bed, shuts her eyes, but doesn't sleep. Afraid to dream. They all are. Afraid of warning bells and dark marks glittering like Slytherin stars.

**3.**

Slytherin stars and Griffindor moons echo themselves into the way Dumbledore meets Alice's eyes with his own piercing blue ones, and calls her toward him with a jerk of his white-haired head.

It makes her feel mature, responsible, more than such a simple gesture should. Her words as she comes into range – "Alice, I need to speak with you" – bring her back to his office, years ago, after one of her occasional slips or mishaps, with his stern voice that sounds both like an explosion of fireworks and the twiddling of thumbs. Lily stands beside him, Harry at her hip; the smile she gives her son contradicts the tension that lines the rest of her face, as she passes him to James with a whispered word and trembling hands.

**4.**

A trembling left hand flicks a wand, petite lips murmur a command, and possessions leap, chaotic, haphazard, into an open trunk. A seventeen-year-old Andromeda vows to practice this spell sometime later, sometime when she will never have to return to this musty house of polished silver and tarnished lies.

A few scattered distant relations insist that she can stay with them, but she needs to stand on her own. One more moment could send her spinning into the mousetrap that has sprung up and caught her family for ages, sending them spiraling into madness and black holes that never open.

There have been two more unexpected other offers made, offers of shelter and protection and perhaps even hope: one from Alice and one from Lily, two girls far younger than her but who seem so much older, who hover on the edge of her mind like heroes and legends and dragonflies.

**5.**

A dragonfly is captured in two cupped hands, trembling, unsteady hands that belong to a tired face with haunted eyes. "Shhh," a hoarse voice whispers to the fluttering wings, a tone meant for a small child. "Shhh, don't be afraid." Her grip slackens, the delicate creature escapes. "It'll all be over soon," she mumbles in a husky imitation of the silky black hair and thin lips that have become all she knows. She rubs at her wrists to check for invisible chains, leans over the side of the rickety bed. "It'll all be over soon…"

Frank and Alice Longbottom were tortured for information concerning the Dark Lord's whereabouts after his loss of power. They are both currently in St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Frank and Alice Longbottom were tortured for information concerning the Dark Lord's whereabouts. Frank and Alice Longbottom were tortured for information concerning the Dark Lord. Frank and Alice Longbottom were tortured into insanity. Frank and Alice Longbottom were tortured –

Someone has left the newspaper lying on the floor again. The pages are brittle, as though it has been left out in the rain, and a Healer with thin, smiling face quickly rushes over to snatch it up. "You don't have to look at that, Sweetie," she says, in a calming voice that could not have been so perfect without years of practice before a mirror. Her left hand molds perfectly around the rolled-up newspaper; her right smoothes the starched, white sheets. "There's someone here to see you, isn't that nice?"

Someone has chubby cheeks and trembling lips that remind Alice of pain. She closes her eyes, heart beating wildly, and turns her head toward the wall.

**6.**

The wall of her bedroom is not thick enough, the lock on the door is not strong enough, and Lily is not afraid. She sets Harry down on the bed, humming a lullaby and whipping her wand from her sleeve. I'm sorry, Old Man, she once thought, upon imagining this day, I'm sorry, but don't need your politics, and children do not belong in a war. She is not sorry anymore.

Betrayal to counter betrayal, love to defy loss, Lily stands before her son, hums louder to block out nearby shouts, half-formed words leaving her lips: _sleep little darling, do not cry… and I will sing a lullaby… _She shuts her eyes to avoid the flash of emerald gleaming from beneath the door. Just like your eyes, Severus told her once. Avada Kadavra eyes, hadn't she ever noticed? Eyes of death. It was the last time they willingly spoke.

Once, Dumbledore had lectured like the scholar he was: steady tone, raised head, composed façade. "Voldemort," he was telling his students, would-be Order members all too eager for death, "can imagine no fate worse that death. To defeat him, we must recognize this weakness, and exploit it against him."

She, Alice, and Andromeda had sat unmoving in hard wooden chairs before the old man's desk, drinking in every word, eager young soldiers.

Now that the moment has come, Lily is not recognizing her enemy's weakness; she is reevaluating it.

The door bursts open, because once upon a time, the Dark Lord flipped a coin, watched it land queen-side-up, and her son had heads in this particular gamble. The door bursts open, because while gracious, smiling Alice could swear and hold on tightly to her child, Lily had molded into the system, repressed her fury into an, I'm sorry. She needs nothing more than to be as brave as Alice.

While her wand remains steady in her hand – ""Don't you dare come near him! Not Harry, _please _not Harry!" – she no longer feels like fire.

**7.**

Fire crackles in a hearth, for floo purposes only, on a cloudless and perfect morning; Alice sits on Frank's lap, the happiest woman on earth, eating ice-cream from its carton with a fork while he drinks black coffee and reads a newspaper.

Frank has been saying, almost as though speaking of two strangers, "I used to wonder about you and Lily Evens, sometimes. Potter, I should say," he corrects himself. He is unaware of any old wounds that have suddenly been torn open.

Alice smiles mysteriously, unblushing, and takes another forkful of ice-cream, but does not reply.

"We should set a better example for the baby," Frank suggests after a pause, dropping the subject good-naturedly, with one hand contentedly on her stomach. The past has less meaning with each passing moment. "Sit in separate chairs, cook ourselves real food."

"Tomorrow," she promises. Her daily fear that tomorrow will never come is evaporating, because Alice Longbottom has decided to save the world.

She does not believe in past and present. The age of five happens just the same as twenty does; history builds up into a mountain, and the rest of life, the works-in-progress, each current love and hate and fear, coat the top like a thin snowfall.

The War is a blizzard, but maybe escapable, if someone could catch each of the flurried snowflakes on an outstretched tongue.

**8.**

Biting her tongue and trying her best to keep her eyes locked with Sirius's, Andromeda magicks the next overflowing packing box down to the ground beside her. He sits on the windowsill of his bedroom, while she stands in an alleyway below, caught up in the suspense of this pre-dawn escape.

"You pack like a girl," she taunts; he flips her off before throwing his last bag over his shoulder, the cloth wriggling around what must either be a living creature or several Quidditch balls. Climbing from windowsill to windowsill while she watches with a half-suppressed grin, he thumps to the ground – "Grab some of those bags so I can apparate you, Looser," she adds, "Ted and Dora will wonder where I've gotten off to, we haven't got all night." She wonders when their roles switched, when age began to matter, when she became the responsible one.

Her hand she reaches around his waist in order for him to side-along-apparate properly, and she can tell he's embarrassed not to have passed his test yet. A Black should never fail at anything. They're rushing away, her harm glued to his; his skin is warm beneath his thin Muggle t-shirt, and she tells herself she digs her fingers slightly farther in only through hard-learned motherly instincts, the way she's always so afraid to let go of Nymphadora. She tells herself this until she can almost believe it.

As they land, he trips, stumbles so that his chest brushes against hers, for an instant. He steadies himself with a hand on her shoulder, looks embarrassed but leaves this hand in place.

"You're sure you don't want to come stay at my place for a while? I'm sure Dora'd love to see you," she offers, and somehow, subconsciously, her hand has come to rest on his, and the air is thin and still, devoid of any warbled love song, empty, just the two of them. They stand before the gate of the Potters' house, just as he had requested, and she had promised. This is not the first time she has looked at him like that, and not the first time he has returned her glance. She wishes for Hogwarts and teenaged mindsets, broom cupboards, abandoned corridors, secret passageways lit by candlelight or the center of the Quidditch pitch in the middle of the day.

Andromeda is married. She is married and happy. She is happily married. There is no disputing this fact, the way her eyes light up as Dora leaps into her arms and Ted pecks a kiss on her lips. There is nothing quite like her husband singing along to the radio, off-key, while her daughter dances along on the sofa and the War cannot slip through an opened door or window, cannot tumble out of the fireplace like Father Christmas or apparate onto her unsuspecting head as she haphazardly cooks macaroni and cheese, playing her part.

Sirius is sixteen and smells of firewhisky, along with what might be gunpowder. He pulls open the gate, dragging his old-fashioned trunk with two heavy packing boxes under one arm, muscles flexing with the effort.

She leans in to kiss him on the cheek, but whether he means to or not, he turns his head ever so slightly, and she catches his lips instead.

It is all over in a second. "Talk to you soon?" he asks her deviously, with that calculating look in his eyes like he's trying to figure her out.

"Yeah," she promises, backing away into the night. "Soon." She is out of sight within a moment.

**9.**

Within a moment of skimming the front page, Lily slams that morning's newspaper onto the table a bit too forcefully.

Entering the room and looking over her shoulder, James asks, "Who was it today?" The War has devoured discretion like a starving beast.

Her throat tightens, though she can't say why today should affect her any more than yesterday had or tomorrow will. "A few Muggles in London. But, you know, the picture…"

Glancing over at it, he winces, runs a hand through his hair.

"Do you ever think about leaving, hmmm?" The words depart her lips all in a rush, before she can register what she is saying. "You know… just packing up and going far away. Maybe, like, Argentina, Thailand, somewhere we don't know the language and can't read the headlines?" It sounds selfish, pouring from her mouth, but give it a minute and she'll tell him why.

He looks concerned, sitting down beside her, unable to keep his fingers frenziedly from his hair, an old nervous habit on which her opinion varies from day to day; instinctively she rests a head on his shoulder, allowing, tone suddenly businesslike, "So maybe that wasn't the best plan. But maybe if we at least got out of your parents' house? I don't want Harry growing up to think we're completely incompetent."

His eyebrows are raised in inquisition, furthered as she smirks, quite against the original mood of their conversation. "Harry?"

**10.**

"Harry's such a lovely baby," Alice murmurs fondly, still busily fussing over her own son, who's insisted on wearing his bright orange pumpkin suit for the third time this week, doesn't seem to believe that his first Halloween has ended. "I just can't stand all this. It could have been _Neville_, we could have been the ones who – who – " Her face nearly crumples, but she composes herself upon Neville's concerned, wide-eyed look. "Don't worry," she coos, keeping the horrible tremble of almost-tears from her voice. "Mummy and Daddy aren't going anywhere. We're all safe, now." She kisses his forehead and hates herself, just a bit. The purpose of her family has become to seem to her nothing more than a reminder of might-have-beens.

The sounds of singing from a passing parade cut harshly against her ears, and if the baby were not still in her arms she would do anything to block it all out. "I'm so tired of all this celebrating," she says, her customarily smiling lips dropped to their more recently habitual frown. She shakes her head, takes another step toward the staircase. "Anyways, Frank, I'll be putting Neville to bed now, alright?"

"Oh, sure, Honey," says a voice, sickeningly sweet, "I'll be waiting." Except: it isn't Frank speaking at all. Alice's grip instinctively tightens on her child, who whimpers a bit as she swings around to face a wild-eyed Bellatrix Lestrange, one who kicks aside Frank's unconscious body casually and nods a signal to two hooded followers.

Alice prays, one hand going for her wand, that she can somehow be as brave as Lily Potter.

"We have some business with you," Bellatrix says, or something of that sort, the flames in her eyes seeming hardly metaphorical, flipping her dark hair over her shoulder, raising her wand to point it directly at Alice's chest. "Go on, now. Set the baby down and he won't get hurt."

**11.**

"…ditching me so you won't get hurt. Sirius Black, afraid of a broken heart," Andromeda is taunting lightly. They are sitting in some old forgotten Hogwarts closet – she a seventh-year Slytherin and he a much younger Gryffindor, there could hardly be a better meeting place.

"That's hardly the point," he corrects gracefully, with that easy sort of grin that he can never seem to loose. "We're better than this, is all," he continues, in all Siriusness. "This is what _they_ do, they marry their cousins and have their shriveled, defective babies – "

" – like I'd want _your _little smartasses," she cuts in, but not defensively. The balance of power between them, despite any differences, has always been exactly equal.

"If we keep this up, we're just following in their footsteps. We might as well be Cissa and that slimy Malfoy boy."

Making a face, she shoves him lightly. "You're comparing me to Cissa?" It's her way of saying she agrees; her pokerfaced, Slytherin accord. "Didn't her last kid have two heads, or something?"

He shrugs. "I've lost track."

Waiting a moment for their full situation to sink into them both, Andromeda leans against the wall, passive. "I suppose you'll be running back to Remus's loving arms, then?" she asks at last, not at all regretful.

"No quicker than you'll be jumping on that what's-his-name, Tonks."

"Which I'm off to do now, actually."

"Not so fast." He pulls her back in, just as she'd predicted. "Don't you want to say good-bye?"

**12.**

"Good-bye," seventeen-year-old Alice whispers, a smile on her round face, the day before the Hogwarts Express will take her away from the castle forever. She stands on a secluded section of the roof, empty towers lurking in its three corners. Nearby is the trapdoor she uses so frequently to come here, the place she feels safest.

The castle does not answer her farewells; it does not differentiate between her words and those of any other seventh-years desperate for one last moment to run laughing and screaming through its stone walls. She lies on her back and watches the clouds, some like sheep but one or two as hazy grey renditions of dark marks in the sky.

**13.**

Dark marks in the sky have no meaning, in the Gryffindor girl's dormitory on a lazy Friday afternoon, both Lily and Alice lying across Lily's bed, the first with an uneasy smile but the second contented. Though the both are covered by a thick red-and-gold blanket, their clothing lies strewn haphazardly across the floor. Outside the window, snow falls thickly.

Lily shakes her head and sits up, using the blanket to cover herself. "This is wrong," she says, searching through the scattered mess of fabric to pull together her school uniform. "You're with Frank. You're happy with Frank."

"I know." Alice stretches, but does not yet leave her relaxed position on the bed. Just for a moment, she would like to be more than the sixth-year Hufflepuff who smiles too much. Her crumpled 'Weird Sisters' t-shirt, given to her by a loving and hopeful Frank Longbottom some weeks before, is thrown at her face.

"This was a one-time thing." Lily seems to be convincing herself more than the other girl. "It doesn't need to happen again."

"I know," Alice echoes blankly, pulling the shirt over her head but not standing. Lily has already deposited all her clothing in a heap before her. Before Alice knows what is happening, she is back in the library with a half-written essay before her, Lily across the table. Once or twice they meet each other's eyes, steadily and without blushing, until Frank comes shyly over to sit beside her.

"What did you want for Christmas?" he inquires shyly. "I never asked."

**14.**

"I never asked you," Andromeda says quietly. "There was that day, right before I turned seventeen, with… and then that guy died…" the words catch in her throat.

"What's his name, Bones," he prompts tiredly. The first attack on a Hogwarts student, more than a few eternities ago. She knows what he must be thinking: that she is going to blame him, accuse and shout. They are sitting in a small, dingy room in the Ministry, he chained to his chair and she as close to the opposite wall as possible. Guards stand by the door, eying them closely.

"That night…" she meets his eyes directly, and they are just the same eyes she remembers form broom closets and secret passages, from family gatherings and Hogwarts banquets and Order meetings. "Someone sent me a flower, and I thought it must have been you. I was just wondering…"

"Wasn't me. You and that Bones boy had a thing, then, Andi?"

"Don't call me that. Don't talk like you know me."

He snorts. "I didn't send you the damn flower, Mrs. Tonks. Now, is that all you have to say?" he asks impassively – a Black, despite all denial thereof, and so not one to beg and plead for help.

"Your time's up," calls the menacing voice of some auror or other, and when she leaves she doesn't look back, and tries not to remember.

**15.**

It is important to remember that, before aught else, this is a love story – that the world need not be built on might-have-beens – that a day is built of moments and a world built of lives – that love cannot stand without loss. In cemeteries and by roadsides are left flower-bunches and fairy-rings of candles for fallen heroes. Everyone has heroes, but Andromeda most of all.

Andromeda holds her daughter's hand tightly as she takes a step closer to the bed. "Hey Alice," she says, sociable and friendly above a disintegrating heart. Ted puts a hand on her shoulder.

"Dumbledore said not to come here, you know," he points out.

"I know." Andromeda is picturing two of her cousins, both murderers in their own way. She sits in a chair by the bed, facing away from the window, ignoring both her husband and the nearby nurse glaring at her. Nymphadora she sets on her lap, old as the girl might be for such a position. No one speaks for a moment.

Alice has taken a piece of gum from its wrapper; she shreds it to little bits and throws them one by one against the wall.

"Were you a friend of the Longbottoms?" the nurse asks. The entire ward feels dark, and dingy, as though screaming for more light.

"Yes," Andromeda lies distractedly.

"Terrible thing," the nurse is murmuring. "Terrible, terrible thing."

Her daughter fidgeting on her lap, pelted by little bits of chewing gum, Andromeda echoes, "…terrible."

**16.**

"Terrible idea?" James asks. "No, a terrible idea was when I dyed your hair pink in second year. Sirius's plan is flawless."

Lily purses her lips. "I don't think…"

"Trust me." He wears that childlike smile that she loves, for all their desperate situation. They sit at their kitchen table, just after midnight, illuminated by light from an enchanted, neon green fire in the fireplace nearby.

Lily stares into the flames with her bright Avada Kadavra eyes, but only sees Harry. Uncharacteristically quiet, she murmurs, "I trust you." She cannot bear the thought of surviving this endless war without both her husband and son; but then, she once could not imagine her own willing presence within five feet of James Potter.

Sirius stumbles unsteadily from the fire with a mumbled, hurried apology. "I was just talking to Andi," he explains, "and then Moony turned up, all suspicious as usual. But anyhow." He gives a mock bow. "I'm here now. Moral support, and all that shit. Now, where's the blasted rat?" The fire behind him writhes and spits a few sparks, before spewing out an uncomfortable Peter Pettigrew, pulling down the sleeves of his robes in nervous discomfort.

Sirius, preparing to step back and let them proceed with the spell, looks Pettigrew appraisingly up and down. At last, he says, "Good luck," and it sounds almost like a command.


	2. Bellatrix, Dolores

**Disclaimer:** I still don't own it.

**A/N: **I don't think Umbridge had any backstory in the books, but honestly I can't remember - so if what I put here was totally incorrect, forgive me. Also, I would like to appologize for comparing Umbridge (my least favorite character) with Bella (one of my favorites) - it all just fit so well together, I couldn't resist.

**A/N 2:** The percent of people who review on this site is pathetic. I don't care if it's this story or someone else's entirely – but right now, just for me, I'd like you all to go out and review _something_. Tell me about it, and I'll give you a cookie.

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**True Cardboard Villainy**

**1.**

History will remember a woman with heavy-lidded eyes and long lashes, glossy black hair like the shadow she stood for. History could not see as Bella saw, the silver cloud across which she strode to sit herself delicately in her required seat, the tiny diamonds glittering up from the chains that wound her. For all she held her head high, she seemed little more, in a sense, than a child with a crown of withering flame. The prisoner who now sits before you was caught red-handed remaining loyal until the end, and she begs for no forgiveness but her lord's.

"You have been brought here before the Council of Magical Law…"

How pleads the accused? Guilty. Guilty of honor and pride and remaining true to her own faltering footsteps. If the Light are dancing butterflies she may be a moth, but she'll trust the Dark Lord to steer her away from Muggle lightbulbs just as she trusts that he will return to her as soon as she is worthy.

"Finally, Bella," he'll say in that icy calm way of his, voice made of icebergs and iron and silvery moonlight. He will have emerged suddenly from the shadows in which he has been hiding, but he'll have been there all along. "Finally, you've made me proud…"

"…for a crime so heinous that we have rarely heard the like of it within this court," the Ministry official states, his cold not inviting as her master's. He makes it fall together, his words fitting perfectly, reminding her that she will never have to be alone, and look! My Lord, your Bellatrix has made history upon her high throne. See her, over there, chained and viewed as little better than Satan himself? The jury may as well be her subjects in a royal court, submitting rather than sentencing, their assured declarations of obedience coming in the form of wild applause and frozen silence.

**2.**

In the cold silence of an office decorated only with photographs of sulking prisoners and court orders, Dolores wears pink, the color of lip-gloss and babies and love on Valentines' nights; the flushed shade of a pale cheek following the sharp strike of her angry hand. She was six, then, but she is thirty-six now, dressed all in varying shades from dusty rose to vivid magenta. Onto a mahogany desk she drops a stack of papers that feel to weigh twice as much as her less-than-slender body, as she announces with a cough, "For you, Mr. Crouch, Sir."

He peers up at her from his desk chair, magical window behind him depicting a dreary sort of rain that turns everything it touches to mud and mush, tetchy November weather with all the charm of piss and glutinous egg whites. There will still be wizards in the streets, dancing through the rain with their fireworks and confetti, their firewhisky and conviction that everything will be alright. "Underbride, was it?"

"Umbridge, Sir." She is not a blushing schoolgirl as she speaks these words, any more than she is a reflection of the dismal view beyond the window.

"Oh, yes." Crouch takes a slow swig from a mug of what might be tea, then winces as though his throat has caught fire, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "I heard about your sister, just last month, was it? Such a dreadful thing, I am truly sorry." The words come as though memorized from a sympathy card, as though the great Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had strode down the aisles of a Hallmark store, memorizing meaningless elegies and empty words of compassion.

When Dolores nods and attempts to thank him, she is rebuked with the wave of a hand. "Remember," he says without a trace of joy, "no more fear. He's gone."

"How could I forget, Sir?" She is gone, too. All that remains is the color pink, a smile that wishes to be gleeful, a cough that nearly chokes. Behind her, a pecking sound against the door is identified as that of one of the messenger owls that will one day be replaced with flying memos. The bird lands briskly on her shoulder, sticking its leg out imperially for Crouch to snatch up the folded parchment tied there.

His face turns from a violent shade of puce to an even more horrifying mauve, finally draining entirely of color and hardening to stone. "Very well," he says, rolling the message to a tight scroll in his clenched fist. His tone has changed drastically, from diplomatic to composedly infuriated. "Well, I must be off, Umbrine, urgent business to attend to; you can see yourself out, of course. And, ah, you might want to clean…" he gestures to a gooey mess on her shoulder left by the owl.

Before she can answer, he is gone, gone to a courtroom of stone benches and heavy air and the presence of four prisoners, one of whom might be his son, though it is another entirely who will be recalled as the foundation upon whom all would-be sadists and ice queens might base themselves, going down in admiration and human status but most of all in history, time after time.

**3.**

Time after time come cheap replications of the thin shield against life that is sometimes called love, a word that means nothing more than awkward children holding hands or whimpering couples who'll do nothing to save themselves for faith in the other. Rudolphus Lestrange leaning over to whisper, "Marry me," wrapped in his thick cloak after his and Bella's first Death Eater meeting had nothing to do with love. This may have been a business arrangement, but the price was fair, and their Lord would for sure approve. Bella was fifteen at the time, naïveté flowing in rivers from her graceful form but quick to evaporate.

There was a Sirius situation to explain, and she meant this all too literally – but her husband-to-be understood the weight of commands as clearly as she, and so she came to her cousin in the darkness. Her pale hands pinned him to the wall, ever so softly; "I don't know what you think you're playing at," he hissed with the helpless insolence of a wounded dog.

There was no one to find them: the best laid plains remained flawless, though by the end of the night she was not. "Shall we call this a trade?" asked she, when all was done. He shook his head, backing away, pulling his robes back on he did so, nose in the air as though smelling for danger.

"What would you ask of me?" The question was near rhetorical, a childish attempt at matters he could never understand, fleeting words from the boy who would one day be a man called 'a danger to anyone who crosses him.'

She chose her words carefully, or carefully as she supposed necessary. "Don't be stupid," she mocked, not yet dressed, noting predawn darkness outside the window of the customarily abandoned classroom. "There is still time, if you wish to be… redeemed." His wand he had conveniently forgotten of sometime around midnight, and only now reached for as she held it in a steady left hand, her own safely in her right. "You won't stop to hear me out?"

"Not at all." She has to admire him, through the shield of hatred that lies between the two of them; his own wand points just between his eyes, and he smiles that boyish grin that his mother would always turn up her nose at.

"He'll be upset that you've failed to recruit me, won't he?"

"Very." She does not shudder for the phantom of unavoidable future pain, only for the horrific failure of a mission seemingly easy to complete, only for her own weakness and her Lord's displeasure, disappointment.

"Get dressed, Bella," he says, turning away as though no weapon is raised and pointed, as though he has no fear anymore. "Make sure I've got my wand back before Transfiguration." After this, they do not speak again – conventionally, at least. But when the Marauders' next prank causes mayhem to all but she, Bella cannot quite write it off to luck.

**4.**

"…lucky," a six-year-old Dolores's parents were carefully explaining. She was very lucky; she did know this, right? She must be very nice to her sister for not being as lucky as her.

For a room in her family's house once reserved for only guests had suddenly borne a plaque upon its door, _Myra's room_, battered as though it had been there all along. This room, in which she was first introduced to Myra only moments later, had thick lace curtains obscuring the light; it smelled of grandmothers and hospitals and cats and cats, cats like those on the on the horrible ornamental plates in a display case by the window. This new girl sat like a stranger at the edge of the bed and only ever moved to cough softly, hem-hem, hem-hem-hem, wisps of mousy brown hair tucked behind her ears. Dolores felt irrational hate rise like bile in her throat.

"You'll be at Hogwarts soon?" her sister asked, the first time they were alone together – an easy topic, hypothetically.

"I'm only seven. And not magic yet." This slipped out like a dirty secret and was mocked by the older girl's neon pink pajamas, several times too large; the slight lie about age went unchecked.

Her newfound sister, almost nine years of age but never to grace the halls of Hogwarts, shifted her weight uncomfortably, but did not or could not sit up straight. "I just figured – you seemed so – perfect – " The words had slipped and fallen like stones in an avalanche before either of the two girls could had understood what was being said; Dolores, unbeknownst to herself, had stepped closer – quite a bit closer – before the door was opened and her mother's head became visible.

"I think that's enough time bothering your sister, hmmm?" the smiling woman asked, taking the hand of her younger daughter and leading her out of the room once more. This was February fourteenth; by the sixteenth, the two girls would spend all free time together, walking on eggshells in a fragile dust-storm of the past.

They built a fort of cushions and chairs, one day, and lay inside listening to the radio. "There's a moon tomorrow night," Myra said in a listless attempt at conversation, spreading out the last blanket on the floor and lying down on it.

Dolores, sitting cross-legged with her back against the sofa, had her hair in tight pigtails. "There's a moon every night, she replied crossly, arms folded over her chest.

Like a deer in headlights, her sister froze, her breath becoming ragged with what felt like fear. She addressed younger girl carefully. "Mum and Dad never told you, did they," she murmured in helpless disbelief, maybe addressing Dolores or the pile of pillows beside her. "I change," she said, her words falling like stone in the heavy air, "with the moon. I get… different."

There was a silence before the younger of the two girls began to giggle nervously. "Girls do that always," she offered in her shy, high-pitched intonation. "They get mean sometimes when the moon changes, Mummy told me because she'd been yelling but she didn't mean it."

"No!" Myra cuts in, almost defensively. "I mean, yes, that too, but I'm, I – " The next words come all in a rush: "What do you know about werewolves?"

Before either of them could understand what had happened, Dolores had snapped, "You're lying," sharply slapping one of her sister's colorless cheeks with power unexpected from tiny six-year-old fingers.

**5.**

Thin fingers curled around a wand, thirteen-year-old Bellatrix asking in a low, dangerous undertone, "Who invited that _thing_, in here anyways?" gesturing in Remus's direction with that fierce look that could see right through him. The Grimmauld Place was decorated for Christmas and packed with purebloods and Muggle-haters of various relations to her, talking and drinking while their Death Eater masks were packed neatly in with their luggage.

She, as it happened, had been the one unfortunate enough to hear a rustling sound from the kitchen when she knew for a fact that both house elves were otherwise occupied – had been the one to throw open the pantry door to glimpse, in the darkness, far more of her cousin Sirius that she had ever seen before, and far more of Remus Lupin than she had ever desired to. Leading them at wandpoint back above the filth of the kitchen and into the entryway, the supposed empire of house elves only, that question had come out in a rush of disgust – "Who invited that _thing_?" and Lupin had not appeared at all perturbed or unaccustomed to being seen as anything less than human.

From somewhere nearby, her mother had called, "Bella, be nice," in that tone that meant she could not have cared less; Bella did not pay particular mind to the words, too busy smirking with perfect lips and eyes that now held a secret.

"Yeah, Trixie, mind your own shit," Sirius had murmured scathingly, "you breathe a word of this to anyone and I'll – "

"And you'll what?" she challenged. "Go running to Dumbledore? There're bigger things out there than school, you know." He would never be anything more than childish; he, her opposite and imprint, beautiful as she, her young doppelganger with eyes full of laughter, passing lightly from the room with his scrawny companion's hand in his, while careful chatter filtered toward her, wisps of conversation that reminded her of whom she most desired to be, of the high throne she strives for in the coming war.

**6.**

The War may have ended over a full day before, but the Ministry looks much the same this morning to Dolores who, impassive and graceless, departs a gilded fireplace into the atrium, full as it is of victorious smiles and still the occasional no-heat fireworks bouncing from wall to ceiling.

From the fire beside that which she has exited stumbles a man, no older than twenty but with the weary air of a tired and battered fighter. Dolores recognizes him vaguely from reluctant trips to the Werewolf Registry with her sister, and by instinct stiffens as he stumbles into her and steps on her toes with a distressed and hung-over look on his face. The man – Romulus, was that his name? – jumps back with a mumbled apology too rushed to be distinguished in the general din.

"Sorry," Dolores says sweetly, "didn't catch that" – but already he, swearing, has made his way back into the line to floo away again. As she watches, he reaches the front of the line, only to change his mind by whatever twisted logic. Her mind screams of the dangers of this Dark creature as he approaches the security wizard, but spins back around at the last second, repeating this sequence for over fifteen minutes before finally exiting through a fireplace in a burst of flame.

She has reached the lift already by the time he relents and appears once more, approaching the security desk with shadowy circles under his eyes like the dark side of the moon. "Remus Lupin," he says, handing over his wand with some semblance of confidence not henceforth displayed.

"Your purpose here today, Mr. Lupin?" the wizened old wizard on security asks, more cheerful than his ordinary monotone.

The werewolf freezes, his words coming out thick and forced. "I'm here for an audience with Sirius Black." Dolores, staying to watch rather than entering the lift, thinks vaguely that she should not have expected better from a werewolf, not after –

"Didn't you hear?" the security wizard asks, passing the wand back with a strange expression on his lined face. "You're too late. They sent Black away just five minutes ago. Azkaban, you know. Life sentence, and it serves the bastard right."

Before Delores herself can register this information, Lupin has already snatched up his wand and raced away toward the exit to the Muggle street, pushing passersby out of his way. She takes the lift up to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement as though nothing has happened, because neither the werewolf nor the criminal had had deserved better.

**7.**

"You deserve better, Bella," the Dark Lord's cold voice assures her, as he runs a pale finger along her cheek. "I can teach you things that school would never even dream of." A strand of her hair has fallen across her face, and he brushes it away in a motion that she might fancifully call _loving_, if she didn't know better. "You've been loyal this past year, enough to rival all others of my followers," he continues. They are alone together, wherever it is that he has taken her; outside, in a forest clearing surrounded by the stereotypical thick mass of tangled trees and moonlight. "And a fine example to the others, I might add. I would train you in all that I know; in time, I would raise you above the rest…"

As he continues speaking, she smirks with pride, holding her head just a bit higher with each passing moment but still remembering to throw herself down before him at the conclusion of his dialogue, murmuring a reverent, "My Lord." On her knees, his coppery, blood-like smell surrounding her, she is surprised to find him kneeling before her, lifting her chin with an icy hand.

"Now for your lessons, Bella," he says steadily, moving to sit beside her with his legs spread out, almost a sign of causality, leaving her wholly unsure of how to react. She makes up for this discrepancy by remaining entirely still.

**8.**

Entirely still but for her hands, fidgeting with the folded parchment in her hands, her first Hogwarts letter and guarantee of her future, Dolores waits for someone to speak. She sits with her mother and sister in a kitchen that would feel cozy but for the summer heat that slowly bakes all trapped beneath the sun. She would like for someone to say –

"We're very proud of you," her mother announces finally, snatching up the letter for herself to murmur its contents very quickly aloud, so that the words spin around and give Dolores a headache.

Her sister offers blandly, "I knew you could do it," in a voice that might be pleased but only sounds tired. The full moon had been two nights before, and Dolores could hear the howls from outside her window while she sat and shivered and refused to sleep. This had become a habit for her, over the past five years, as natural as eating and breathing and hoping for her first sign of magic; it had come only months before, in the form of a bruise forming just below Myra's hairline before her hand had even been raised.

"Of course," he mother is continuing above her sister's incessant cough, "I would offer to let you stay here and home school with Myra, but she'll be going away as well."

"There's a program at St. Mungo's," Myra volunteers, her false smile dropping at the thought of it. "They're trying to find a cure for… well, you know." This was the only time Dolores had ever heard her refrain from using the word 'werewolf.' "I'll write to you all the time, I promise," she adds, with something a bit like fear. "Anyways, we can go out shopping for your Hogwarts things now, if you'd like."

"She's making you do this, isn't she?" Dolores asks, as soon as they are safely alone in a shadowy apothecary, searching for basic potion ingredients while unable to breathe for the smell.

A short pause stretches on before the soft reply. "I've always been the guinea pig type." Dolores, who has always been one to take out any anger in defense of her sister on the girl herself, makes a mental note to bring something, to pretend she's there – a piece of jewelry, or maybe even those horrible ornamental plates with their neon pictures of would-be-cute cats. The darkness of the shop in which they stand, huddled together for no reason at all, is nearly stifling.

**9.**

Rather than feel stifled or oppressed by the darkness, Bellatrix basks in it, spinning around in juvenile delight, arms spread wide, as her Lord watches in amused silence.

"Have you ever killed, Bella?" he asks softly, though he must already know the answer. They are once more in the unidentified forest, he sitting on a tree-branch, and it is time for _lesson two_ now that her nervous system has recovered from the first. "The idea appeals to you; I can see as much in your eyes."

"You think too much of death, My Lord," she replies cautiously, now kneeling before him in her natural sign of compliance but with a voice that bites and stings like the snakes he will sometimes converse with while she watches on in awe. There are a mass of such snakes at the base of the tree in which he sits, slender and emerald green; they swarm around, hissing their praises in a language she cannot quite grasp, some with minute golden crowns. She does not think her Master can see them. This has ceased to bother her. She continues slowly, deviously, "Death is not the worst we can give."

His expression grows ugly. "I had expected better. You sound like the Old Fool."

"Forgive me, Master." She drops to her knees and curls in a ball on the ground, with her forehead to the ground, his feet dangling above her. "That was not my intent." As one of the thin, green snakes coils around her head like a crown, she cannot quite feel its touch, but smiles to herself nevertheless. "I only meant: surely pain is more useful? If your punishment was to _dispose of_ me each time I was unworthy of you…"

"An admirable idea, certainly," he allows, though whether he refers to her proposition of torture or the possibility of her death is unclear. "Shall we practice your _Cruciatus_, then?"

She is fairly sure what such a lesson will encompass. "If you wish, My Lord."

He jumps, catlike, back to the ground, just as she stands in preparation, the snake still balanced on her head. "I have seen your aptitude for this particular curse," he begins with a hint of pride. "You have demonstrated great potential." She basks in his praise just as she does in the light from the one bright star just above her head, standing out inelegantly in a sky blanketed by darkness. "You have the passion to make this spell successful, but to understand it…"

Without time to brace herself, the woman finds her bones on fire, her skin peeling away, bones snapping one by one, while her Master's body glows pale silver and from somewhere a chorus of voices with whom she is all too familiar recite: "_Bell_a, _Bell_a, _Bell_a…" The curse fades; the voices continue their chanting, louder and louder, roaring in her ears despite her hands clasped firmly over them. Instead of stopping them, as she had trusted he would, the Dark Lord merely joins in, his tone almost singsong in quality: "_Bell_a, _Bell_a, _Bell_a…"

When it is all over, she realizes with wild confusion that his arms are around her, and that sunrise is nearing. "There remains one last Death Eater meeting, before your return to Dumbledore's school," he announces abruptly, not mentioning what has just passed between them. "See that you attend; we may arrange our next lesson then." The jade snakes that before had bowed to him in awe and reverence have now vanished as though their presence had never been there to bring a thin smile to her lips.

"It's been an honor, My Lord," she says, sweeping from him with the fluttering of shadowy robes. She could make a fine queen, someday.

**10.**

Someday, it will be her. That is the truth of war: that every day in which Dolores opens her _Daily Prophet_ and scans the reports of bloodshed and chaos, she must do so in full knowledge that it is only a matter of time before what she reads there will be the words that stop her world like a final heartbeat.

One day, running late for work, she has only time to tuck her newspaper beneath her arm and leap into the fire; and an hour later, a confused hour of sympathetic glances and compassion lined with repulsion, she chances to open it, reading a headline, the ninth werewolf attack of the year thus far. One woman captured – a known werewolf herself, though yet not a Dark supporter – her husband and child killed. Her sister's picture glistening up from the paper makes Dolores feel sick; she throws it away, refuses to grieve, and the problem is solved.

It is not as though this is a great blow, as though they had ever gotten along; or rather, it was not as though Myra had ever shown any sign of wanting to; to refrain from flaunting her abnormality, her defect at every possible opportunity, to take even a tiny segment of the constant rain of _you're-so-lucky_s that rained down on Dolores at every possible moment.

At the end of September, yes, there was a full moon; on Halloween of that year, there was another. That is all that Dolores can take from this story, that and an incessant cough, and both the hope and expectation that she will never see her sister again.

**11.**

Again, Bella raises her wand in an automatic motion, a deadly sneer playing on her lips, in a house altogether too inviting and homely for comfort. The Longbottom woman is still speaking incessantly, assuming that her self-righteous husband is still listening behind her. "Anyways, Frank, I'll be putting Neville to bed now, alright?"

"Oh, sure, Honey," Bella assures her, in a sickeningly sweet mockery of the degrading way in which she has seen some couples speaking amongst themselves, "I'll be waiting." Bella, filled with a cruel and wild satisfaction, kicks aside Frank's unconscious body in plain view of his wife, who has drastically tightened her grip on her own trembling child, but regrettably neglected her wand on the kitchen table. Bella has already happily pocketed it.

"We only have a few questions to ask," Bellatrix says, the flames in her eyes hardly metaphorical, flipping her dark hair over her shoulder as she raises her wand to point it directly at Alice's chest. "Go on, now. Set the baby down and it won't get hurt, I promise." Clearly, if the Dark Lord is gone, than it is because his Bella has failed him; and so logically, the only way to return her great Master is to follow his lessons of long ago. The others may believe what they like, but Bella knows the truth.

The three others whom Bella has brought along do their work well, tying both husband and struggling wife to a post at the base of the carpeted staircase, prying the screaming baby from its mother's arms before finally awakening the unconscious Frank Longbottom. Bella explains to him slowly, clearly, as though speaking to a young child: "You'll be first. Just tell us what we need to know, and no one else will be hurt." She has given this speech a thousand times, but now the circumstances have changed, and promises of possible safety have slackened; desperate times have called for more improvisation, if nothing else.

The Crouch boy, it transpires, is quite good with children; he holds the tiny, sniveling Longbottom, rocking it gently back and forth until it hushes, murmuring to it under his breath. "Quieter, now," he pronounces softly, "your Daddy's going to be putting on a show, and we wouldn't want to miss it, would we?" With a solemn nod, it reaches up to clench a fistful of his straw-blond hair.

Alice watches with eyes wide and dismayed while Bella circles the couple like a preying hawk, her Rudolphous looking on appreciatively. "Don't worry," Bella assures her in graceful sincerity, "this will all be over soon."


	3. Remus, Andromeda, Arabella

**Disclaimer:** Don't sue me, it's not mine.

**A/N: ** this chapter was taking forever to write and i don't think i'll be finishing it anytime soon, so i thought i'd give you the first half. enjoy, and tell me what you think!

* * *

**Come Alive**

1.

He awakes to an irritable Sirius rapping him over the head with a newspaper. "Morning."

"No, it's not…" Blinking furiously, Remus sits up to find the other Marauder fully dressed in yesterday's clothing, glancing restlessly over his shoulder. Outside, the sun is well past noon. Remus jumps out of bed.

"Oh," Sirius murmurs vaguely, "I think we've missed Charms." He seems rather lost, throwing the newspaper down beside Remus and turning vaguely as though he might leave. He ignores the stream of protests and swearwords but turns sharply back at the exasperated cry of: "What's _with_ you, Padfoot?"

"Oh," he repeats hazily, "It's just been a strange night, you know?"

2.

"…you know how to use the telephone if you need me," Ted concludes. "I left the number on the table – " He, working in the Muggle Relations section of the Ministry, is off for a meeting with some very important Muggles.

"I know," Andromeda assures him. She pecks a good-bye kiss on his lips. "We'll be fine, and you'll be back in a few hours."

"Of course," he agrees grudgingly, biting his lip. "I've just been so nervous since the attack – maybe we should have taken the Ministry up on that safehouse – "

Andromeda shakes her head, already pushing him toward the door. "We're getting along fine," she says, giving one last quick kiss and grinning as he trips on his way out the door.

As soon as he leaves, her pretense of bravery falls. "Dora?" she calls, rushing up the nearby stairs in search of her daughter, unable to relax until she has seen her daughter's smiling face.

3.

Her smiling face an entirely false façade, the receptionist of the Werewolf Registry orders, "Sit over there and we'll be with you in a moment." Remus obeys, seating himself on an uncomfortable sofa beside a girl slightly older than he.

"First time?" she asks pleasantly.

He scowls. "I wish," he mutters, then wishes he had said something different.

"No need to be so grumpy," she scolds, "it's not even that time of the month." She fiddles with the hem of her shirt as she speaks, and gives irregular, anxious gasps. "I'm Myra," she adds, drawing out each syllable. "And you're…"

"Remus."

"How ironic."

"Yes, well…" He grows just as uncomfortably awkward as she, and misses Sirius. Behind them, the clock ticks onward.

4.

With a rhythm like a ticking clock walks Arabella down the hall, always one step behind the lively Professor Dumbledore. She may be mature and past petty hatred – she may have lived as nonmagic among wizards for decades, but it still stings to pass a classroom full of bangs and the smell of gunpowder while she shuffles along in her carpet slippers behind an enigmatic old man, for a job she has been given out of little more than pity.

"Here we are," he says, as the stone gargoyle springs aside and they make their way up to his office. "They'll just need to know the basics for today – who we are, when we meet, that sort of thing."

She nods. He has said all this before. He regally pushes open the door to reveal two students sitting in out-of-place armchairs – Andromeda Black along with a boy she does not recognize. Andromeda is trembling slightly, and the boy has slyly crept his hand up her leg. Dumbledore leaves.

"Well," says Arabella, "Dumbledore will have told you about the Order, then? I'm here to get you caught up. Ready for action." She gives a nervous laugh, and hates herself, just a little. Everything – from the boy's warm and sweaty hand resting on the girl's leg, to the shiny whirring instruments strewn about the office, make Arabella irritated and twitchy. "What's your name, dear?" she asks him, as though nothing is wrong.

"Tonks." He smiles pleasantly, and seems almost sincere. "Ted Tonks. Nice to meet you."

"And you." Arabella fiddles nervously with one hem of her robes. "Now," she begins briskly, ignoring the obvious game the two are playing, their feet brushing up against one another, crossing, dancing, the toes of her sandaled feet against his thick boots. "As you know, Voldemort's power is rising…"

5.

"His power is rising. All those with the courage to join him will benefit much, I believe. Much indeed."

Andromeda nods politely as her aunt pauses for breath. They are seated primly on a sofa in Grimmauld Place, watching two house-elves decorate a looming Christmas tree with glistening silver ornaments.

"…Your charming sister Bella, I believe, has already taken his Mark. I do hope you'll be joining her."

"I'll do what I deem is right," says Andromeda in a small, prim voice, screaming inside. She is small and mousey to Bella's glistening elegance, clumsy and awkward to her aunt's tired grace, and she knows it.

"Yes, well." The tension grows, stiff and ugly in the pristine room. She continues, her tone now merely bored, "Sirius has taken it upon himself to invite a half-blood to Christmas dinner. We will tolerate him. We will speak graciously to him. We will make it clear that that piece of filth is not wanted, am I understood?"

Sirius himself chooses this particular moment to enter; Andromeda rolls her eyes at him, and he discreetly returns the gesture. She says, "Yes, of course."

6.

Of course this is a love story. It is a story in which Andromeda sits by the fireside long after midnight, counting the raindrops that fall beyond her open window. She holds a newspaper: November the first. November the first, 1981. With slow, drawn-out movements she tears it into long strips, gently shredding line after line, the depiction of her betrayal. In this story, just a day or so ago, Sirius was holding Dora in his arms, swinging her in circles before setting her lightly back on the rug.

"You look sad," Dora was inquiring, "What's wrong?" in that child's way of saying exactly the right thing with total naïveté.

"Nothing, Nymphie," Sirius assured her. His smile was forced, and he did not meet either child or mother's eyes.

"If you're in trouble, Sirius – " Andromeda began, concerned, shivering and not pretending the smile.

"Let it go," he said with surprising calm. "Let it go. Everything's gonna be alright."

7.

"Alright, what is it?" asks Myra. They are sitting in the waiting room of the Werewolf Registry once more, three days after the end of the world. The rain has not stopped. It looks as though it may never end; Remus rather likes it, weather to fit his mood.

He does not ask what she is talking about. He knows he looks like hell. "I'd rather not, d'you mind?" is all he says.

She offers: "There's a parade this afternoon, if you'd like to – " Her voice is filled with hope and the kind of sickening joy that has infected the entire Wizarding world for the past couple days.

"Not another bloody parade!" He didn't mean to shout so loudly, he didn't mean to make the secretary stare.

"Well, there's also my place. I have… cats and firewhisky. You look like you could use both – if you'd like to come over?"

Grudgingly: "All right." Now, why did he say that?

8.

"Say that you're joking, Albus." Arabella Figg is not amused.

"I'm quite serious, Arabella," says Dumbledore sternly. "Someone will need to watch Harry. Of course, if you're not up to it – "

"Of course I'm up to it! That's not the issue! You can't – you just can't leave Harry with Muggles. Think what Lily would say."

Dumbledore raised one furry eyebrow. "Lily never showed any anti-Muggle sentiments, that I was aware of."

"You're missing the point, Dumbledore!" An angry Arabella is never a positive omen. "He's _Harry Potter_, he's – " She breaks off with a sigh. "Alright, I'll do it," she agrees. "But – Muggles, Dumbledore?"

"Yes, Muggles," he agrees mildly, and offers her a lemon drop.

9.

"Lemon drop?" offers Remus, holding out one of the sticky yellow sweets in his open palm.

Sirius sighs. He is most likely counting to ten inside his head; Remus is clearly trying his patience. Finally, he snatches up the sweet and pops it in his mouth. "Going Dumbledore, are we, Moony?"

"You tell Dumbledore the truth. I need the truth from you, Padfoot."

Sirius chokes. "There was Veritaserum in there?"

"Don't be stupid." They are sitting by the fire in the deserted common room, Remus in an armchair and Sirius on the floor by his feet, night looming outside the windows. It is deathly silent but for their voices and the crackling of the flames. "So Padfoot… where were you last night?"

Sirius is wary. "What's it to you?"

"If you don't tell me, I'll be forced to assume the worst." Remus does not know why he is so threatening. He only knows that he is in love, madly in love, and that his love is hiding something.

"What is this _worst_?" Sirius asks scornfully. "What's the worst I could do to you?" He storms away, leaving a bemused and miserable Remus to contemplate his question.

What is this worst? Meeting another boy comes to mind, as do Death Eater meetings in the moonlight –

Remus won't think about that, not now. He'll curl up in his armchair and hate himself.


End file.
